Questions for the List (that the younger people at the table can use to ask the grandparents and other elders at the table)

Where were you when this event happened?

How did you learn about the event?

What did the leading newspaper editorials say about this event?

TEXTBOOKS

Deeper questions

How to Explore Your Questions

This section will suggest some steps you might take while researching your questions. These may fall into the “next steps” category from the diagram above. They can be used at many places in the research process, and you will often do these steps more than once.

Constantly ask yourself: Why then? Why there? Historical research is constantly asking why certain events happened when and where they did. You should always be asking yourself, “What is the historical context that led to this event or situation? Why did it happen at this time and place?”

Search for primary documents. Historical research consists primarily of constructing arguments based on primary documents. You will want to spend significant time exploring which documents are available that are related to your topic. These documents may include photographs, newspaper or magazine articles, recordings, public records, and so on. As always, consult a librarian if you are unsure where to start.

Read scholarly literature. Reading academic literature is critical for you to identify the questions that have not yet been sufficiently studied, to locate your topic within a particular context, and to ask further questions. If you are uncertain how to find the books and articles you may need, you should ask a librarian for help. If you wish to read about how to use a library, we recommend Thomas Mann’s The Oxford Guide to Library Research.

As you read, look for debates and uncertainties. Don't just passively take the knowledge different authors convey to you. Try to really think about the ideas you read and have a conversation or debate with them. Figuring out what is not yet known about your topic is powerful. This gap in knowledge is a good area from which to generate research questions. Pay special attention to whether certain assumptions underpinning a conclusion should be re-examined, or whether scholars have significant disagreement about a subject.

Talk to professors and fellow students. If you have no clue how to generate a researchable question from academic literature, discuss your ideas with your professors. They can give you suggested readings and potential research directions, as well as fill you in on current debates within the field. Also, don’t forget your fellow students! Some students have started study groups to help formulate ideas for research questions. Students can review each other’s research questions to give comments and criticisms.

Put your research topic in the context of other theories. It is likely that your research topic has already been studied using certain theoretical approaches. (Theories are a way of organizing knowledge and explaining certain phenomena or events in the world.) Therefore, don’t be surprised if you come across a body of literature with similar arguments and theoretical approaches. You are always free to situate your research topic in relation to other theories to help you produce research questions. See our web pages on constructing arguments andpositioning them relative to surrounding scholarly literatures.

Look at the end of review papers for suggestions. Many scholarly books and journal articles pose further research questions at the end of the books or review papers. Pay attention to these questions; they represent the thoughts of an experienced researcher about what still needs to be studied. Take them as guidelines for exploring your own research questions. Of course, you may wish to just absorb them as your research question if they fit your research interests well.

Look for interesting correlations between factors. From the preliminary reading that you do, pay attention to things that may be related. For example, suppose you are interested in how disease affects landscapes. As you do preliminary research, you find that in your landscape the rising rate of AIDS is concurrent with the declining area of crop planting. This initial finding will help you to frame a research question concerning the relationship between AIDS, crop planting, labor, and landscape transformation in the research site.

From: http://www.williamcronon.net/researching/questions.htm

Learning how to ask questions is a useful skill. Look at this EMA blog site

http://fema.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Capturing-the-Questions-We-Ask-Learning-from-History/315547-14692

Story Corps (a good resource for lists of questions)

http://storycorps.org/record-your-story/great-questions/list/#grandparents

Get more questions

Five Lessons for Every Student (by David McCullough)

Published on Mar 24, 2012

First, don't memorize dates and don't memorize quotations. You can look them up. What matters is what happens and why.
1) Go back. Understand that the United States of American did not begin with the Declaration of Independence.
2) Learn history through other means than books and teachers. I would like them to learn history through music, through plays, by doing drawings, through architecture.
3) Take on the lab technique. A teacher, Jim Percoco, does this by having students study statues. Give students a photograph or show them a building, or street corner, or neighborhood, and make a mini little documentary or write a play about it or write a paper about it. Don't give students everything. Let them figure it out.
4) Let them have the chance to work with original documents or the nearest facsimile possible. Let them see that these were written by real people, with a paper and pen.
5) Take them to places where things happen. Take them to historic sites.

Historian David McCullough takes a question from the audience at the National Book Festival, September 25, 2011. This is a clip from the C-Span Video Archive

Here is the clip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPPLHq_gsP8

Appreciation goes to Susan Goding for posting this clip from CSpan (and for taking time to transcribe the tips).

David McCullough calls for "history at dinner" -- and who better to ask?

Click here to see the quote by McCullough

The title, "Let's Ask Grandpa and Grandma" has layers of meaning:
a) McCullough wants us to "bring back the family dinner time"
b) Where are the grandparents? The family structure has scattered in many homes. Why not invite grandparents for dinner and then build questions about history into the discussion?
c) Before the Internet, who was a repository of information and experience? Older people. "Let's ask someone who has seen this situation before."

1. We recommend at least one discussion about history per meal.

2. We invite guest bloggers. If you have a topic or a question along with some links, then send it to MarioPatriot@yahoo.com and TheEbookman@gmail.com

3. Take the lead.
Start with a review of the day's events.
Look for a link to one of the stories raised in this blog (or ask, "What does this remind you about?")
Look for moments like "100 Years Ago Today" or "50 Years Ago Today" to begin a conversation.

4. Ask the children to take over the discussion and ask questions
"What would you have done if you were alive back then?"

"What were the options?"
"What happened a generation before that precipitated this event?" What's the story behind the historical moment?"

What other questions can we post next to the table to help stimulate the conversation?
This list of questions can be passed to the younger kids and they can ask the questions.

How to lead a discussion

Questions for Family History
How to interview a relative

Let's get started.
Here's WHY we are calling this "Dinner Time History"